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Please help the Asterisk by answering astronomy questions

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2010 3:00 pm
by RJN
One of the missions of "Starship Asterisk" is as a voluntarily support mechanism ("ship") for APOD by answering questions about astronomy that people may have, in particular from well meaning people without a background in astronomy. Many of these people will be making their first post and should be welcomed. These questions are typically posed in two places, one being the Library, and the other being right on the Bridge in the discussion posts linked to the individual APODs themselves. I do understand that it might be more fun to debate the details of that day's APOD with Asterisk veterans ("officers"), and to surf the links at the Water Cooler. Still, I do ask for everyone's help in answering well-meaning astronomy questions posed in the Asterisk. Of course if you don't know the answer, then it is OK to leave this to others -- please don't steer someone wrong. But if you can help, even if it is just to point out a helpful link, then please do. I note that several board members have done a tremendous amount of question answering in the past, including Chris Peterson, and to them I am especially thankful.

When can you help? One way to see if there are unanswered questions is to click the "View unanswered posts" link on the front page of the Asterisk and search for questions. Another is to browse the discussion page for the current (or yesterday's) APOD and see if any unanswered questions remain. If you are a forum moderator or administrator, please move questions to the Library so that they can be found more easily. If all of the Asterisk regulars answer just one question every day, that would probably be more than is needed, and be a great help to those just becoming interested in astronomy. Even if you are not an Asterisk regular but do know something about astronomy or the question in question, then your help is also appreciated.

- RJN

Re: Please help the Asterisk by answering astronomy question

Posted: Sun Mar 21, 2010 1:16 pm
by The Code
I saw this up yesterday, And there,s another above this one. ^ Posted Both.

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=18799
http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=18795

I would not know how to answer these,^ In a way that Mr Chris Peterson Could.. Both very interesting questions though.

Edits=^

Mark